Trial of Black in '54 Recalled Anew

Published: November 26, 1995

In your Q & A with Judge Jawn Sandifer ["Scholar Who Became a Pioneer," Oct. 29], he refers to a case in 1954 in which he defended a man named Jesse Morgan. He was one of thousands of black migrant workers on farms in eastern Suffolk, Mr. Sandifer said. "One night there was a raid, and Jesse Morgan didn't run. He refused to give up his money. The police beat him unmercifully, fracturing his skull, then charging him with disorderly conduct. The trial was held in the kitchen of a Patchogue justice of the peace who had an American flag on the wall. No stenographer. No jury. Just Jesse and me surrounded in this small kitchen by white police and the prosecutor. Of course he was convicted."

I believe that Judge Sandifer and I may have the same case in mind, but I can't pin it down with certainty because I don't have my records after all these years. However, it was a case that stuck in each of our minds, though for different reasons, and each of us remembers it from a different perspective.

In 1954 I was a grand jury stenographer employed by the Suffolk County District Attorney's office. My chief assignment was covering the justice of the peace courts and police justice courts throughout Suffolk County. One evening I was assigned to Judge Ralph V. Tuthill's justice of the peace courtroom off Wickham Road in Mattituck. Judge Tuthill was a World War I veteran, a dairy farmer, a nonlawyer, and his courtroom was in his office in his old farmhouse, the farm having been in the Tuthill family for generations. This evening the case on for trial was People against Jesse Morgan.

The defendant was represented by Jawn Sandifer, assisted by a lady. The facts of the case brought out in the testimony were that the defendant was an investigator for some organization. He had come out from the city with a camera to photograph conditions in the labor camp at Cutchogue, the North Fork at that time being largely agricultural with many potato farms. Someone in authority at the camp saw the defendant and telephoned the state troopers at their barracks west of Riverhead. One of the troopers responded, accosted the defendant, and an altercation ensued in the course of which the defendant called the trooper an obscenity. In those days, that was an invitation to retaliation, particularly when said by a black man to a police officer, and the trooper used his billy club to subdue the defendant, and the defendant was injured. I don't remember a fractured skull. My recollection is that the defendant had a prior back injury and he was wearing a brace and the striking by the state trooper aggravated the pre-existing condition.

One reason this case stays in my mind is I had been at the time in the court-reporting field about a year. I had gotten accustomed to four-letter words, but this was the first time I had heard that obscenity. During the trial it was used with such frequency that I had to develop a short cut for it on the spur of the moment. And I was struck that it should be uttered with abandon in the presence of a lady. (How times have changed!)

The defendant was convicted by the judge, it being a bench trial, non-jury, as it was for disorderly conduct, a violation. Mr. Sandifer asked me for an estimate of the cost of the record. I told him the amount and he promptly sent me a check. I had other transcripts to get out and I put this request on hold to be attended to in due course. Apparently Mr. Sandifer thought I was being dilatory and he served me with an order to show cause. Fortunately it was returnable before a Supreme Court Justice for whom I had worked and I was spared the embarrassment. Still it was a painful episode.

The transcript was produced. The procedure at that time was that an appeal from a justice of the peace court was argued before the county judge in Riverhead. I heard later that the court chided the district attorney for allowing his investigator to interject during the trial.

That is my story. I think there is a strong probability that the case Judge Sandifer refers to as being tried in Patchogue and this case tried before Judge Tuthill are the same one. There are similarities: the year, the room in the judge's house, the incident taking place at a labor camp, and the ' . .tchogue," Patchogue and Cutchogue. I was well acquainted with most of the justices of peace in Brookhaven Town during this period and I can't remember one who held court in his home.

I agree that Suffolk County was racist at the time, but was not as biased as depicted in the interview.

It was fun recalling all this, although some of it wasn't funny at the time. Forty years is a long time to remember a case out of the hundreds that I have forgotten.